Page 114 of Collision
“None that really count.”
“Ah, because I count?”
“Yes, you count,” he answers guardedly, as if startled by his own admission.
“That’s not what you said before.”
“I say a lot of things I don’t mean.”
I’m not willing to accept being treated badly just because he can’t hold his tongue when he’s mad, but right now he seems so sincerely sorry that I can’t help but forgive him. I snort, puffing my cheeks out slightly. I let myself fall back on the bed, cover my face with my hands, and try to figure out what to do. All logic goes to hell when Thomas Collins is involved.
“Ness?”
“Mhm,” I mumble with my face still covered.
“You’re not a pain in the ass. Well, not all the time.” I jerk my foot forward, hitting him on the chest with the toe of my shoe. He laughs, and the sound of it makes me laugh in return. He stretches out on top of me, holding himself up on his elbows and making room for himself between my legs in his usual arrogant and overbearing way, as if that space was rightfully his. Unlike the other times, however, I don’t sense any ulterior motives in this gesture, intimate and overwhelming though it may be. All I feel is an extreme need to be close to him, a need that seems to grow more and more urgent. I welcome his body by bending my knees and pressing them against his hips.
He moves my hands away from my face, and I lose myself in the green of his eyes. “But even when you are a pain in the ass, it’s the kind I always want to have around, the kind I don’t want to give up.” The kind he doesn’t want to give up…
I frown and take his face in my hands to make sure he is sober. I look closely at his eyes. They are not red, and the pupils are not dilated. “Are you high?”
“No, why?”
“Because you just said…” The words die in my mouth.
“I know what I said.”
My heart seems to burst in my chest. Yet, the small rational part of me won’t let me just be happy or simply believe him. How can he say that he needs me, when the moment I try to get close to him, he pushes me away in the cruelest way possible? “Sometimes I just can’t understand you,” is all I can manage to say.
“Then don’t. I have a hard time understanding myself most of the time,” he admits.
“Will you ever tell me what’s troubling you?” I stroke his eyebrow, moving the tuft of hair that always falls across his forehead and resisting the impulse to lean forward and kiss his half-open mouth. He stiffens a little at my touches, but he doesn’t pull away.
“No, Vanessa. That’s an off-limits topic for me,” he says firmly. “I need you to understand that. Tell me you can accept it.”
He’s almost begging me with his eyes. Knowing he is in so much pain devastates me. I wish I could just be indifferent to him. I wish I never got those feelings in my stomach when he talks to me, when he looks at me or touches me… Everything would be so much simpler. Even ignoring his suffering.
“Why do you want to keep me if you can’t let me enter into your world?”
“Because it hurts less when you are with me.”
His words always have the power to send my thoughts into turmoil and make my heart beat like mad. “I can accept it, then,” I say, surrendering to him. Thomas releases a sigh, as if a part of him was already preparing to meet more resistance from me and this capitulation has reassured him.
He gets up off me and we both sit down: me on the edge of the bed, Thomas kneeling on the floor. He reaches out for my hips and pulls me toward him. I’m startled at this unexpected gesture as he wraps his arms around my back and hugs me so tightly that, for a moment, I struggle to breathe. I hug him in return, because I have the feeling that he really needs it, and I hope, deep in my heart, that I can alleviate just a little bit of this untouchable pain that is weighing him down. He buries his face in the hollow of my neck and inhales deeply, smelling my skin. I do the same. He smells so good that I wish I could bottle it and keep it with me always.
“You smell like a dude,” he murmurs after a while.
I laugh out loud. “That’s what happens when you wash yourself with a dude’s shower gel.”
“I like it better when you smell like me.” He brushes my nose with his own and looks at me for a few seconds before speaking again.“Come to me the next time you need something. It doesn’t matter if we aren’t talking. Or if you’re mad at me for yet another fuckup. Just come to me.”
“Okay,” I agree softly, wondering how it’s possible that this is the same guy who spewed all that bile at me this morning.
The phone lights up next to me. It’s a text from my mother, reminding me to be home by five o’clock. “Now I really have to go.”
We both get up. Thomas reaches the door before me and turns the knob. Before he leaves, however, an enigmatic expression moves over his face. “So,” he tells me, “I’m gonna see you in a bikini tomorrow night.” He pauses for effect and continues, “Finally I’ll get to see you the way I want to.”
I frown. “Excuse me?”
